It is common for users to use a plurality of computers. A single user may use a desktop computer at his place of employment, a second desktop computer at his residence, and a laptop computer when he is traveling. Sometimes, he may even use all three of these computers in the span of a single day.
Where the user changes an application's settings—such as the preferred font or dictionary for a word processor—on one computer he may wish or expect to have those changes applied to his application on each computer that he uses. Where these changes are not applied across the computers he uses, the user experienced is diminished because of both inconsistent application settings between computers, and the required time and effort to manually implement the changes on each computer.
One scenario where this occurs is where a user is running a particular word processor on a desktop computer and creates a new style. The user expects that new style to be present on his laptop when he leaves for a business trip with the laptop. Further, when the user is on that business trip, he changes a font setting in the word processor, and expects that to be present when he uses the application on his desktop computer.
Another scenario where this occurs is where the user is running a word processor on his desktop computer. Further, he is running an email program through a remote presentation session (such as REMOTE DESKTOP SESSION® or virtual desktop infrastructure), the email program using a different instance of that word processor (one executed on the remote presentation session server along with the email program) to edit documents. Where the user creates a new style for the word processor executed on the desktop computer, he may expect that it also exists for the word processor associated with the email program that he is using.